By: Jonah Morgan
My home state for 25 years, Alabama, is known for a few things: a shining example of incredible rural beauty of the Southeastern United States, from the foothills of the Appalachias in the north to the world's most beautiful white sand beaches in the south; the much fabled southern hospitality found in the heart of dixie; and yes in the US Civil War it hosted the capitol of confederacy in the city of Montgomery. Alabama is also known for more than it's share of unsavory stereotypes, some true and some not.... but lets not go there. One thing Alabama is certainly not known for in the anime / manga subculture is being a rich bastion of fans to those arts. It goes without saying that social interactions on a mass scale or related events are equally unheard of here........ That is, until just recently...
Sci-Fi and fantasy conventions have come through the state over the years and you'd see the token anime or manga tribute. A few cosplay Sailor girls here or some content running in the video rooms there. My city, Birmingham, which is the largest in the state was way past due I've always thought. But the first local con was not to come here, but farther north in the outlying Huntsville suburb of Madison. The year was 2003 and the event was known as Chibicon 2K3, changed the following year to Persacon.
Around this time, having come fresh from an anime convention themselves, George Bruno, Brian Breedwell and Jeff Kretzschmar of the Anniston area first concieved the idea for East Meets South and registered the dotcom. Their event would have several selling points. The foremost being strategically located in the City of Anniston, located virtually equidistant between the largest cities in a several hundred mile radius - Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama. Also, the team wanted to improve on things they had seen elsewhere in their con going experience. That being, chiefly, to conduct an event that would be wholesome and open to fans of all ages but most of all they wanted to make the fans and social interaction between fans the focus of EMS. Being a first year con and being located in a smaller city, they opted to go without inviting guests and thus instead the fans themselves would automatically become the largest names there. The programming schedule would be kept short and simple, this would include an anime viewing room, a live action viewing room, a dealer's exhibition space, an artists alley, a game room, and a main events ballroom which would share items such as a DDR competition, Karaoke Revolution competition, Opening and Closing Ceremonies, Cosplay and Dances. The iceing on the cake would be special trip to Japan for 2 awarded to one lucky con goer to be selected at random.
With a solid event planned, hotel arranged, web presence online, message board active and pre-regs coming in, it seemed God was in his heaven and all was right with the world, but less than a week before the actual event both their website and original convention hotel were suddenly pulled out from under them. The word went out on the anime and con news web that EMS had lost it's space and was possibly in ruins. Sites that didn't even care to acknowledge East Meets South's existance previously, now decided they could draw readers by playing up this unfortunate twist of events.
Jeff, EMS Technical Director, told me their crew was in the car looking for nearby venues to move the Events to almost immediately upon hearing the news. At first, several nearby hotels were considered until the committee approached the city govt. of Anniston (www.ci.anniston.al.us/). They were quickly led to the mayor, Chip Howell, and described their event, even sitting him down and showing him an episode of the Bleach TV series. David Lyons, the Director of Tourism & Conventions for Calhoun County (www.calhounchamber.com) was brought into the picture and has kids who were huge anime fans. The support from the city and county was impressive indeed with radio interviews being conducted with staff, several mentions in the local paper, The Anniston Staer and the chamber agreeing to print 8,000 flyers to help promote the event. EMS was offered downtown Anniston's historic Caldwell building, first built in 1889 and then renovated in 1998. After sureveying the structure, all were impressed with large expansion of space they now had over the original location. There were 3 spacious floors to utilize here, large nearby parkings lots and several nearby restaurants. It would seem the only draw back to the venue was no immediately adjacent hotel space. So EMS was saved. Friday would see the first of the 298 pre-registrars arrive as well as 100 more walkups. The night was capped off with a surprise double dance to the one originally scheduled for Saturday night.
Part II and Photos Coming Soon
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